(A) Irving's argument

1. In his book Goebbels, Irving comments on the deportation of Jews from Berlin, starting in October 1941: 'Hitler was neither consulted nor informed'. As proof for his assertion he refers to remarks made by Hitler at dinner ten days after the transportations had begun. According to Irving, Hitler on this occasion claimed that the Jews had started the war and said:

"Let nobody tell me", Hitler added, "that despite that we can't park them in the marshier parts of Russia!" "By the way," he added, "it's not a bad thing that public rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews". He pointed out however that he had no intention of starting anything at present. "There's no point in adding to one's difficulties at a time like this!".17

2. It is easy to investigate Irving's account of this monologue by Hitler on 25 October 1941, as the German original was published in 1980. An accurate translation of the whole passage would read as follows:

In the Reichstag, I prophesied to Jewry, the Jew will disappear from Europe if war is not avoided. This race of criminals has the two million dead of the [First World] war on its conscience, and now hundreds of thousands again. Nobody can tell me: But we can't send them into the morass! For who bothers about our people? It's good if the terror that we are exterminating Jewry goes before us...I'm forced to pile up an enormous amount of things myself; but that doesn't mean that what I take cognisance of without reacting to it immediately, just disappears. It goes into an account; one day the book is taken out. I had to remain inactive for a long time against the Jews too. There's no sense in artificially making extra difficulties for oneself; the more cleverly one operates, the better. When I read speeches from a person like Galen, I say to myself: pricking them with pins has no purpose; it's better to keep silent; unless one doubts the future of the movement! If I believe that the movement will exist in a few centuries, then I can wait. I wouldn't' have dealt with Marxism either, if I hadn't had the power behind me.18